Friday, October 30, 2015

The current Sinn Fein leadership has failed in its principal long
standing aim of achieving a 32 county Irish republic. This is because
achievement of national self-determination of the Irish people is
impossible under capitalism. It supported the IRA's capitulation to the
forces of British imperialism. Sinn Fein has returned to the position
taken many years ago by what is today called the Workers Party. It has
also effectively accepted the same deal, the Good Friday Agreement, as
was accepted by the SDLP many years ago in the form of the Sunningdale
Agreement.

Following this surrender its popular and electoral strength has
ironically grown enormously over the years. Accordingly the electoral
success of Sinn Fein, North and South of the border, has been on the
basis of defeat, failure and surrender. In a sense failure appears as
success to much of the Irish working class.

Ironically the Irish citizenry are apparently fooled by this political
charade. It rewards failure and surrender at the ballot box. Logically,
if anything, Sinn Fein should have suffered wipe-out at the ballot box.
Ironically the SDLP was the successful party in the North since it was
essentially its programme that SF submitted to with its acceptance of
the Good Friday Agreement. Yet the SDLP suffered electoral slaughter at
the hustings in the North.

The Irish citizenry suffers from a (schizoid) contradiction. There is an
absence of logic in their political consciousness. Its morality is
venal. Sinn Fein, within the context of the Irish republic, make many
promises. Promises that they cannot support given that it supports
capitalism as a social system. Its programme is unrealisable under
capitalism. Given its abject and opportunist abandonment of the national
struggle their is no guarantee that it will not blithely abandon its
current programme too when its political circumstances change. Yet the
public apear to learn nothing. The Official Republican camp did the
same. By abandoning its original aim -- the achievement of a 32 Irish
Republic- its popular support increased eventually giving it seats in
the Dail. DeValera and his comrades did the same. This led to their
growing popularity and electoral successs culminating in its forming the
first Fianna Fail government. In Ireland failure and abandonment of
politial principles spells success.

Clearly this is a serious problem that reflects the current character of
the modern working class in Ireland. Its an indication of the venal
nature of the Irish working class. It has no interest in principled
politics. It is merely concerned with supporting elements within society
that it believes will "protect", even appear to increase its economic
benefits. It has the hallmarks of what Lenin and elements within the
German radical Left in the first quarter of the 20th century termed "the
labour aristocracy". The real poor in Irish society are a marginal
group that is largely ignored. The Irish electorate within the state
south of the border is merely concerned with maintaining its living
standards even if that means voting for a party that supported bombings
and killings for a cause that it later abandoned. Its principle is its
pocket. The venal Irish working class is not concerned with eliminating
the systemic exploitation of labour power once it has money in its
pocket. It does not care as to the blood stained nature of any bourgeois
party once it believes it will protect its holidays abroad. It is a
working class infected by the acquisitiveness of capitalist morality. In
the Marcusean sense it is a bourgeois working class.

A radically fundamental change ( a paradigm shift) in the culture of the
working class is necessary if it is to become a revolutionary force. As
a revolutionary force it must adhere to principled libetarian politics.
Effecting such a coomprehensive transformation is a long and arduous
process. It will not necessarily occur in the short term and it has to
be realised by the class itself. There cannot be any substitutionism.

The anti-water charges campaign has little or nothing to do with class
politics. This populist campaign has not become a force because the
working class is moving to the Left. It is simply an opportunist
campaign that simply wants a return to the status quo ante. It is a
venal response to growing hardship caused by the austerity measures
imposed by the state. It is not anti-statist nor anti-capitalist
campaign. The diverse elements that constitute it merely want a return
to previous living standards. They are not engaged in challenging the
class nature of Irish society and the need for its replacement with
communism.

Consequently parties such as the Socialist Party and the Socialist
Workers Party are merely accommodating this opportunism by their
involvement in the anti-water charges campaign. Indeed the Irish working
class have shown its first signs of vitality over the water charges
issue. Yet this mass mobilisation is being mounted at a time when the
Irish capitalist class have recovered from the shock and collapse in
confidence suffered by it in the aftermath of the financial crisis of
2007/8. This earlier period would have been a politically more correct
period for mass mobilisation. But again the reactionary Irish working
class get it wrong. Questions need to be raised concerning the nature of
the Irish working class. Romanticising the working class as undertaken
by the radical left merely holds back any chances of authentic political
development. It is almost a taboo among this Left to make any serious
criticisms of this working class. Left communists are not obliged to
pander to a working class that has been backward for so long.

In order to stand a chance of assisting in the revolutionising of the
consciousness of the working class it is necessary that communists
struggle to raise the consciousness of the most class conscious elements
within the working class. Its aim is the raising of class consciousness
as opposed to appealing to the less politically conscious strata within
the working class by coming down to its level through the medium of the
anti-water charges campaign.

The outcome of the same sex referendum in the Irish Republic shows a clear majority in favour of it.

Many people see this outcome as a manifestation of progress. However
this is far from the case. The popular vote in favour of same sex
marriage merely means that the electorate support the widening of the
institution of marriage in Ireland. But the issue is that marriage is an
oppressive institution that sustains the nuclear family. Marriage today
is predominantly an institution of the state and the Christian
churches.In the course of human history the family has assumed different
forms. The present prevailing family form in the West is a bourgeois
form that plays a key role in inculcating bourgeois morality and
ideology into the working class.

Much of the radical Left and the gay rights movement by calling for a
yes vote were promoting nothing but the fortification of the bourgeois
marriage institution at a time when the working class have been
increasingly shifting away from it. Instead of calling for a yes vote
the call for the abolition of marriage should have been the demand. The
very ironical fact that many of those that promoted and voted a yes vote
are members of the Catholic Church illustrates the bourgeois nature of
the yes campaign. Furthermore the fact that the major parliamentary
parties actively supported a yes vote is more evidence of the bourgeois
basis of the campaign.

The referendum is a decision made by the Syriza government because it
has run out of road. Syriza lacking strategic vision is entrapped in a
political cul de sac. Its politics have reached their limits. After
approximately five months of negotiating with the EU leadership the
abject result is capitulation to austerity. The recent draft deal would
have meant the acceptance of even more austerity. Accepting such a deal
would have split Syriza and alienated much of its popular support.
Rather than face this it fell back on the referendum tactic. But this
forthcoming referendum can only add to the confusion and further
demoralisation of the Greek working class. This is because the
referendum is ambiguous. It is not clear as to what it is about. It is
not clear as to whether it concerns a vote for or against the Euro and
even EU membership. The brevity of the campaign and the surrounding
financial conditions entailing bank holidays, capital controls and cash
withdrawal restrictions may not help debate. The referendum, as it
stands, is a manifestation of the political bankruptcy of Syriza.

Should the public vote yes in this forthcoming referendum it will mean
the transfer of political power back to the previous conservative Greek
forces. In that way Syriza will have, in effect, surrendered power to
these conservative forces thereby missing a golden opportunity to
actively participate in the radicalisation of the Greek and European
masses towards the seizure of popular power and the establishment of
communism. But Syriza's very nature prevented it from such an
achievement. Its function is the disarming of the Greek working class.

The Greek crisis is an acute and concrete manifestation of the limits of
capitalism. The Greek crisis can only be resolved on a European and
global basis through the popular democratic establishment of communist
society. It is not a choice between being in or outside of the Euro.
Both choices are capitalist I character entailing austerity.
Anti-austerity is only realizable through a popular based social
revolution that transcends the limits and contradictions of capitalism.

The various programmes advanced by much of the radical left are lodged
within the limits of capitalism. But it is these very limits that the Greek
financial crisis is manifesting. Leftists proposing the limits of
capitalism to solve those very limits is a contradiction.

The principal problem, then, is not the bourgeoisie. The principal
problem is the failure of the working class to recognise through its
experience the Greek situation as a manifestion of the limits of
capitalism. This is not, as such, an objective problem but a subjective
one. It is a problem of the consciousness of the Greek and European
working class --class consciousness. Capitalism in the form of the Greek
crisis is telling the working class that it, capitalism, has limits and
thereby cannot satisfy the needs of the workers. Yet the working class
resist this thereby persisting in the maintenance of the deluded image
of a capitalism that can overcome its own limits.

The Greek working class have no option but the promotion of European
communist insurrection to abolish the EU and the capitalism that it
supports. The Greek working class cannot achieve communist on a national
basis. A revolution confined to Greece would be strangled at the hands
of European and US capitalism. Greek society is too weak to successfully
transform itself on a nationalist basis. Communism in one country is an
impossibility.

Staying in or out of the Euro is not an option for the Greek working
class since both options will involve austerity for it. Only communism
precludes austerity. Syriza's anti-austerity platform is based on the
false view that an austerity free membership of the capitalist Eurozone
is possible for the Greek working class. Events are verifying the
pro-austerity nature of Syriza. Even if Syriza was to take the working
class out of the Euro austerity will still face it.

Consequently the entire debate as to whether Greece should stay within
the Euro or not is a bourgeois debate of no real relevance to the
working class. It is an option presenting itself within the limits of
capital. Indeed present conditions concerning Greece are acutely
manifesting capital's limits and the need to transcend them in the form
of communism. Much of the Left, such as the Irish Socialist Party, show
solidarity with Syriza in its pseudo anti-austerity campaign. In this
way it is promoting capitalism and deceiving workers. Of course in
Ireland the active politics of the Socialist Party suggest that
anti-austerity is possible under Irish capitalism.

The annual budget statement is a bourgeois matter. It is the obligation
of communists to highlight the latter rather than getting exclusively
immersed in its details. No matter how popularly appealing a budget
appears it can never serve the class interests of workers. Sections of
the Left relate to state budgets as if they are pliable and can
consequently meet workers' needs. In this way they seek to delude the
working class and thereby promote capitalism. The state budget cannot,
by its very nature, transcend the limits of capitalism. No government
can transcend these limits through the medium of the budget.

It is not a subjective matter. It is an objective matter determined by
the laws of capital. Conservative bourgeois governments do not introduce
annual budgets that fail to meet the needs of the working class because
of their immoral nature. Capitalist constraints prevent this just as
the law of gravity and the second law of thermodynamics impose objective
constraints on the physical world. The nature of budgets is not a moral
question.

Consequently arguments made by the radical Left as to how adverse the
substance of a particular budget is amounts to no more than mere
political rhetoric designed to obstruct the development of class
consciousness. Such delusional rhetoric is designed to suggest that
capitalism is a progressively rational system capable of serving working
class needs. It falsely suggests too that bourgeois governments fail to
meet the needs of workers for morally subjective reasons. This assumes
that such governments consist of "bad people".

In the light of the foregoing it is clear that it is not the obligation
of communists to evaluate budget details in themselves. To do so is to
base a budget on the false assumption that it can serve the interests of
workers. At most the content of a budget must be discussed as evidence
of the inherent inability of budgets to meet the needs of workers.

Having said this I am not claiming that all budgets, although bourgeois,
are of equal value. Some budgets may more adequately serve the class
interests of capitalists than others. Analogously some bourgeois
governments are better than others at representing the interests of
capitalism. Bourgeois governments can vary in competence.